{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1071", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1071, "subject": "Eco & Wilson", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1998-08-30T17:42:19+00:00", "last": "1998-08-30T17:42:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Paul C Duggan", "address": "pduggan at world.std.com" }, "date": "1998-08-30T17:42:19+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Eco & Wilson", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 urth-errors at lists.best.com wrote:\nThe story in Illuminatus is secondary, the characters are simply vehicles\nfor ideas.\nRAW has the ability to write a book that causes many readers to question\ntheir own dogmas and beliefs. RAW deals with how we cope with the confusing\nworld around us by constructing our philosophies." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While I realize that there is no accounting for taste: \"BAH, HUMBUG!\" I\nalso have to admit that I haven't read Illuminatus, only Schrodinger's Cat\nand the first Historical Illuminatus book. I tried to read Ill, but that's\nhow it made me felt so I couldn't get through it. The other two\n(particulalry the HI book [The Earth will Shake?]) were somehwat better,\nbut the same cricisim of the sex applies to Schrodinger.\n\nSometimes the dogma of relativism and the need to question beleifs is so\nham handedly presented that it's a boring as a tract. Illuminatus seems\nthat way to me. \"ooh I'm so shocked\" \"ooh I'm soo freaked\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Eco's 'trip' is the study of 'how' we attack the unknown. What we as humans\nemploy to understand the confusing world around us. There is a slight\ndifference here. The moral of Focault's P is a simple one. If we act as if\nthere is a huge and ancient conspiracy then it becomes reality. The BIG\nmystery in FP is that THERE IS NO BIG MYSTERY! However, since all those\ninvolved BELIEVE and ACT as if there is a huge conspiracy it might as well\nbe true. (If you believe there is a monster in the basement it doesn't\nmatter if there really is one or not. You will act as if there is a monster\nin the basement. You will never enter the basement. If you ever got the\ncourage to go in the basement every shadow would be that monster comming to\nget you. Any noise you heard would be the monster shuffling his feet.) FP\nsimply says that if we believe that there is a deep, dark secret that people\nwill kill for--- then, people will start killing to find out the deep, dark\nsecret-- wheter it really exists or not. To put it in RAW's terms - if\neveryone believes that paper money is really worth something, then it\nbecomes so. If everyone thinks that RED means stop. Then it does. I don't\nknow if Eco is asking us to question the government's authority over us, or\nquestion the Federal Reserve, but both writers are approaching the same\nsubject." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But to react there to RAWs terms, I cite wolfe! (dueling authors!)\n\n\"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we\nare their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges. When soldiers \ntake their oath they are given a coin, an asimi stamped with the profile\nof the Autarch. Their acceptance of that coin is their acceptance of the\nspecial duties and burdens of military life--they are soldiers from that\nmoment, though they may know nothing of the management of arms. I did not\nknow that then, but it is a profound mistake to believe that we must know\nof such things to be influenced by them, and in fact to believe so is to\nbelieve in the most debased and superstitious kind of magic. The would-be\nsorcerer alone has faith in the efficacy of pure knowledge;\nrational people know that things act of themselves or not at all\"\n\nAnd there is more to FP than what you say. There really is a \"mystery\".\n(p620 \"...someone had just arrived and declared himself the Son of God,\nthe Son of God made flesh, to redeem the sins of the world. Was that a run\nof the mill mystery?...he led the Church fathers to ponder and proclaim\nthat God was One and Triune, and that the Spirit proceeded from the Father\nand the Son, but that teh Son did not proceed from the Father and the\nSpirit. Was that some easy formula for hylics? And yet they, who now had\nsalvation within their grasp--do-it-yourself salvation--turned deaf ears.\n...The mystery of the Trinity? too simple: there had to be more to it.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Focault's P. and Illuminatus! are both warnings against dogma.\nFP is not satisfying because we want to know the truth. FP tells us what it" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He gives the truth, but it is not satisfying (to some).\n\nAnd by the way, I really enjoyed the long \"boring\" section in the middle.\nMaybe I am half of a mystagogue, but I enjoyed letting myself be\nfascinated and drawn in and worn down and confused. But illuminatus left\nme cold because the only pleasure RAw seemed to want me to have along the\nway was sexual. And screwing dismbodied spherical vaginas just isn't my\nthing.\n\nIf anyone would like to comment on the Wolfe content of my post feel free.\nI think we should not get too far off track. It's one of my favorietes and\ngraces the openging of my web page.\n\n(http://world.std.com/~pduggan/wolfe.html)\n\n\"I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, | paul + | +\nelated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I | --|--\nhave to transmit my mental experiences lest I die.\" | + | +\n -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy | pduggan at world.std.com" } ] } ] }